Old Truths That Are Ever New

Published:Zvezda, No. 25, June 11, 1911.

      Signed:V. Ilyin.

      Published according to theZvezdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1974],

      Moscow,Volume 17,

      pages211-215.Translated:Dora CoxTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Theincidents that prevented the workers’ delegates from attending the second
congress of factory doctors in Moscow are known to readers from press

reports.[1]We are not in a position to dwell here on the details of
those incidents or to comment upon their significance. We shall merely note the
instructive reflections that appeared inRechof April 14, i.e., on the
day the congress opened, in a leading article which was written on the eve of
these events.

“Itis to be regretted,” wrote the organ of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, “that outside obstacles are placed in the way of such
participation [participation by representatives of the workers]. The fate
likely to befall some too fiery speakers is all too well known. As a result, the
representatives of the workers insist on talking about their difficulties in
concentrating on special questions, the impossibility of organising proper
representation at the congress, about the obstacles put in the way of their
organisations, and many other things of a like nature which are far removed from
the programme of the congress and the discussion of which distracts attention
from the questions on the agenda and sometimes leads to undesirable
consequences. The charged atmosphere explains also the intolerance shown by
workers’ representatives to ’bourgeois’ speakers, to all the measures taken by
the government, and to the possibility of collaboration with representatives of
other social groups.”

Thiswhole tirade is a characteristic example of feeble lamentations whose
impotence is explained, not by the chance composition or by any special features
of the given liberal party, of the given question, etc., but by causes of a more
profound nature—by the actual conditions in which the liberal bourgeoisie
in general finds itself in twentieth century Russia. The liberal bourgeoisie is
longing for thekind of “regime” under which it could have dealings with workers not
likely “to make too fiery speeches” and who are fairly “tolerant” in
their attitude towards the bourgeoisie, towards the idea ofcollaboration with the bourgeoisie, and “to allthe
measures taken by the government”. It is longing for a regime under which
these unassuming workers “collaborating” with it could “concentrate on
the special questions” of social policy and would meekly agree to confine
themselves to patching up the threadbare cloak of bourgeois solicitude for
“the younger brother”. In a word, the Russian liberals are longing for
something like the present regime in England or in France,as
distinctfrom that of Prussia. In England and France the bourgeoisie
holds full sway, and it exercises its rule practically (with few
exceptions) by itself, whereas in Prussia it is the feudal landowners, the
Junkers, and the monarchist militarists, who are in the ascendancy. In
England and France the bourgeoisie makes particularly frequent, free and
wide use of the services of men of proletarian origin or traitors to the
cause of the proletariat (John Burns, Briand) in the capacity of
“collaborators” who “concentrate”, undisturbed, “on special
questions” and who teach the working class to maintain an attitude of
“tolerance” to the rule of capital.

Thereis not the slightest doubt that the English and French systems
are much more democratic than the Prussian; that they are much more
favourable for the struggle of the working class, and have to a much
greater degree eliminated the medieval institutions which distract the
attention of the working class from its principal and real adversary. There
is not the slightest doubt, therefore, that support for all aspirations to
remodel our country along Anglo-French, rather than Prussian, lines is in
the interests of the Russian workers. But we must not confine ourselves to
this indisputable conclusion, as is so often done. Only here does the
disputed question or questions begin—the dispute is with democrats of
various shades.

Theaspirations must be given support. To support him who is weak and
who wavers, it is necessary to sustain him with something more solid and to
dispel the illusions that prevent him from seeing his weakness and
understanding its causes. One does not give support to the urge towards
bourgeois democracyby strengthening those illusions and by adding one’s voice to the feeble
lamentations of the weak,inconsistent and wavering adherents of democracy,
but, on the contrary, one deprives that urge of its force. The bourgeoisie
of England and then of France, in the middle of the seventeenth and the
late eighteenth century respectively, did not lament the “intolerance” of
the younger brother, and made no wry faces over the “too fiery speakers”
among the representatives of that younger brother, but they themselves
supplied themostfiery speakers (and not only speakers) who
inculcated a feeling of contempt for the advocacy of “tolerance”, for
weaklamentations, for vacillation and irresolution. Among those
fiery speakers there were men who, in the course of centuries, have served
as beacons and guides to humanity, despite historical limitations and often
the naïveté of their ideas regarding the means of salvation
from every kind of misfortune.

TheGerman bourgeoisie, like the Russian, also lamented the fact that
the speakers representing the “younger brother” were “too fiery”—and
it left behind it in history a model of abasement, infamy, and flunkeyism
for which it was rewarded with kicks administered by the “Junkers”. The
difference in the attitude of the two bourgeoisies was not due, of course,
to the “characteristics” of different “races”, but to the different
levels of economic and political development which caused one of them to
fear the “younger brother”, and made it vacillate impotently between
deprecating the violence of feudalism and censuring the “intolerance” of
the workers.

Thoseare old truths. But they are ever new, and remain so as long as
we are treated, in publications issued by people who profess to be
Marxists, to lines like the following:

“Thefailure of the movement of 1905-06 was not due to the ‘excesses’
of the Lefts, for those ‘excesses’ were them selves the consequence of the
aggregate of a large number of causes; nor was it due to ‘treachery’ on the
part of the bourgeoisie who, everywhere in the West, had ‘betrayed’ at the
crucial moment; it was due to the fact that there was no clearly defined
bourgeois party which could supersede the obsolete bureaucracy at the helm
if government, and which would be strong enough economically and
sufficiently democratic to enjoy the support of the people.” And a few
linesfurther on: “... the weakness of the urban bourgeois democrats who should
have become the political centre of attraction for the democratic
peasantry...” (Nasha Zarya, No. 3, p. 62, article by
Mr. V. Levitsky).

Mr.V. Levitsky is more consistent in his renunciation of the idea of
“the hegemony of the proletariat” (“the urban bourgeois democrats”, and
no other group, “should have becomethe centre of attraction”!),
or he expresses his ideas more boldly, definitely and consistently than
Mr. Potresov, who brushed up his article inThe Social Movementto
comply with Plekhanov’s ultimatums.

Mr.V. Levitsky argues just like a liberal. He is an in consistent
liberal, despite his use of many Marxist phrases. He has no idea that an
entirely different social category, not the urban bourgeois democrats,should have becomethe “centre of attraction for the democratic
peasantry”. He forgets that this “should”wasa reality during
momentous historical periods in England and in France, as well as in
Russia—they were of momentous significance although they were of short
duration in the latter country; in the two first-named countries it was for
the most part the democratic, ultra-democratic and “too fiery” plebeian
sections that united the various elements of the “lower classes”.

Mr.V. Levitsky forgets that even in those brief periods of history
when these “lower classes” played the role of “centres of attraction for
the democratic peasantry”, when they succeeded inwrestingthis
role from the liberal bourgeoisie, they did exercise a decisive influence
in determiningthe degreeof democracy the country in question was
to enjoy in the succeeding decades of so-called peaceful
development. During the brief periods oftheirhegemony, these
“lower classes” trained their bourgeoisie and remoulded it to such an
extent that subsequently it was anxious to beat a retreat, butwas
unableto go farther in this retrograde movement than, say, an upper
chamber in France, or certain departures from the principles of democratic
elections, and so on, and so forth.

Thisidea, confirmed by the historical experience ofallEuropean countries—the idea that in epochs of bourgeois change (or, more
correctly, of bourgeois revolution) the bourgeois democracy of each country
is moulded one way oranother, assumes one form or another, becomes trained in one tradition or
another, and accepts one or another minimum of democracy, depending on the
extent to which, in the decisive moments of the history of the nation,hegemonypassesnotto the bourgeoisiebutto
the “lower classes”, to the “plebeian” elements, as was the case in the
eighteenth century, or to the proletariat in the nineteenth and twentieth
con tunes—this idea is foreign to Mr. V. Levitsky. The idea of the
hegemony of the proletariat constitutes one of the fundamental tenets of
Marxism; and the liquidators’ departure from these tenets (or even their
indifference to them) is a profound source of quite a number of their
irreconcilable fundamental differences with the opponents of the
liquidationist trend.

Everycapitalist country passes through an era of bourgeois revolutions
which produces a definite degree of democracy, a definite constitutional or
parliamentary regime, a definite degree of independence, love of liberty,
and initiative among the “lower classes” in general and the proletariat
in particular, a definite tradition permeating the entire political and
social life of the country. The particular degree of democracy, or the
particular tradition, depends on whether, in thedecisivemoments,
the hegemony belongs to the bourgeoisie or to those at the other end of the
scale; it depends on whether it is the former or the latter which (again in
those decisive moments) constitutes the “centre of attraction for the
democratic peasantry” and, in general, for all intermediary democratic
groups and sections.

Mr.V. Levitsky is a past master at coining brilliant formulations
which have the effect of at once revealing the ideological foundations of
liquidationism, bringing them out clearly and in bold relief. Such was his
famous formula:

“Nothegemony, but a class party”, which—translated into plain
language—means: not Marxism, but Brentanoism (social-liberalism). The two
formulas noted in the present article—namely: “the urban bourgeois
democratsshould have becomethe centre of attraction for the
democratic peasantry” and “the failure ... was due to the fact that there
was no clearly defined bourgeois party”—are, undoubtedly, destined to
become just as famous.

[1]Theworkers’ delegates to the second all-Russia congress of factory
doctors and representatives of industry were arrested on April 13 (26),
1911, on the eve, of the congress.